


Heaven By the Moon

by Metallic_Sweet



Series: Rondò for Redemption [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Drunkenness, Gen, Immortals and Mortals, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Odin's A+ Parenting, Other, POV Third Person Limited, What Cost for Victory?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 08:12:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thanos and the Chitauri would have come with or without Loki. The Avengers defeated the invasion. It is the consequences of interdimensional travel, of the tear in space in time above New York City, that would prove to be the real battle.</p><p>A Loki joins the Avengers to combat a mutual enemy AU, except the enemy has passed and it's a race against the clock to stop Earth from being swallowed by a rift in reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven By the Moon

"Brother!"

It hurts to simply breathe. He'd been spent nearly an hour, forty-eight spells, and three knives ago, but there wasn't any stopping, not when it would mean the death of all else along with himself. So he'd pushed and pulled, dragging energy out of resources within himself that had long been stripped dry, and somehow he'd lasted long enough to stop this tear in reality from widening and put the temporary patch on the opening.

So, if he lets Thor hold him, lets Thor cradle his exhausted and spent body close, it's because he's barely able to stay conscious, let alone fight his physically stronger brother's vice grip off. No other reason but that.

Loki coughs and the spike of pain that accompanies the movement causes him to pass out.

 

He wakes up in a cell of a room, attached to Midgardian medical machines and lying on a clean if slightly uncomfortable bed. The walls are dull steel, the emblem of S.H.I.E.L.D. clear on a file folder by the door, and his entire body aches in ways he hasn't felt since he fell from the Bifrost. He can feel his seidr, only barely there, still stripped down to almost nothing from his desperation and careless. When he glances to his direct right, he finds Thor, slumped slightly forward in a chair, snoring into his own chest.

Loki closes his eyes and falls back asleep.

 

When he next wakes, it is in his room in the Avengers Tower, his heavy comforter pulled up around his shoulders, an intravenous needle in his a left arm leading to a nutrient bag on a rolling stand. He spends a long time simply watching the drip, feeling the still weak pulse of his seidr within his being. It's stronger than before, recovering at least to ease the pain of utter emptiness that his reserves had been in at the end of the last battle, but he knows it will be at least a month before he is fully recovered. It is a month he does not have.

Slowly, everything aching, Loki eases himself into a sitting position and then to standing, careful not to dislodge the needle in his arm. He grits his teeth through each painful step it takes to reach his desk, to pick up the tome still lying open there and then to repeat the journey back to his bed. He rearranges himself among his pillows, easing his legs underneath the comforter and pulling the book to rest in his lap. Centuries old descriptions of complicated, theoretical spells lie out before him in a language that only the Norns have heard in as many or more years.

Loki isn't the sort of person who gives up, but that doesn't mean he can't be reduced to frustrated tears.

 

He wakes up tucked back into his bed, the tome closed and set onto his bedside table with one of his long leather bookmarks to hold his place. Thor, then; the others wouldn't have known that the leather is enchanted not to damage the ancient paper. The IV has been removed, the only evidence of the needle having been under his skin a gauze bandage around his upper forearm. There is a tray of food--a chunk of bread and grapes and a glass of water--set on one of the portable folding tables from the recreation room. Loki doesn't feel at all hungry, but he reaches out to take the grapes anyway, eating them slowly and mechanically.

A knock comes on his door as he picks off the last of the grapes, followed by Thor's voice, lower than usual. "Brother?"

Loki places the empty stem of grapes back on the plate. "I'm awake, Thor."

The door opens immediately at that, Thor's hand impulsively moving to turn on the light switch before it stops halfway to fall back to Thor's side. Loki nods slightly at that and Thor enters fully, closing the door behind him and moving to sit on the foot of Loki's bed.

"How are you?" 

Loki grimaces, shifting to once more take the book and set it back into his lap. "I likely look as well as I feel."

Thor nods, looking grim. He often looks grim these days, ever since the fight to contain the rift began to stretch from a month to two and now almost seven. Loki knows that his treatment by S.H.I.E.L.D. and the rest of the Avengers has vastly changed since he joined them six months ago; they would not have returned him to his own room if this was the fourth month, maybe even the fifth. Thor would have flipped on the lights if this had been earlier in the month, too, even though the electric lights tend to give Loki a headache.

They sit together in a silence that's almost companionable, Thor looking down at his hands and Loki picking his way through the text. Once, when they were children together, they had studied much like this in the late afternoon light on Asgard, Thor daydreaming instead of reading and Loki absorbed in whatever text he'd lifted from the library after lunch. Back then, Odin had often been away, attending to business throughout the realms, and Frigga had managed much of the court and throne in his absence. It wasn't until later, when Thor traded books for weapons altogether, and Loki began to wander through the paths between to sate his thirst for knowledge, that Odin spent most of his time on Asgard and Frigga more time away from the throne. Loki isn't sure when he noticed the difference, isn't sure when he sensed that age and the burden that accompanies it had fallen over Odin, but, by the time he did, it was already too late.

He must have dozed off again, those thoughts swimming about in his mind, because Loki finds himself once more tucked into his bed, the book removed and set carefully aside. Thor is still there, though, sitting now against Loki's right side, and he hands Loki the glass of water without being asked, the sixth sense that has always existed between them strong once more, at least for a moment. The water is tepid now, but Loki finds himself thirsty enough not to care.

"How long?"

Thor takes the empty glass and sets it back on the portable table to exchange for a new sprig of grapes, which Loki accepts mechanically. "Only three hours," Thor answers and then adding, "and it has been five days since the tear last opened."

Loki chews the grape in mouth, doesn't say anything. He knows the frustration shows on his face because Thor reaches out and places a hand on his knee, the comforter softening the grip. Loki swallows thickly, the grape tasting like sludge in his mouth.

"It will open again in a day or two if I cannot renew the patch."

Thor looks up sharply, lips pulled into a thin line. "You are in no condition for that."

"I know," Loki says, and his voice comes out too acrid for him to hide behind anything. "But what choice do we have?"

Thor is silent at that and Loki feels the anger diffuse like a balloon popped within his own chest. He slumps back against his pillows and looks up at the ceiling, at the splatters of ink that still remain up there from earlier in his tenure here, when he still had energy enough for temper.

"Wake me when it begins to show signs of breaking," Loki says, and Thor nods, helping him back under the covers to sleep.

 

The patch shatters before they can get to it, a ghastly monster that Loki can't even begin to identify tearing the rift open even wider than it was before. If Loki had any energy left to do anything but shut the newly widened tear as much as he can, his seidr visibly spidery and weak at the edges of the patch even to mortal eyes, then he would have cursed the day he ever decided to come to Midgard. He should have just finished the job he'd intended the fall from the Bifrost to do for him, should have sucked it up and done something useful with himself just once before the Chitauri got hold of him. If Loki had just not been a coward -

No. Loki bites the inside of his cheek and presses his shaking fingers to his eyes. He cannot waste his mind on such thoughts, not right now at least. After all, the time when he could have fixed things in such a way has long past, and dwelling on the past is the realm of scholars, which Loki might have been, if he was a creature disposed to luck. 

Carefully, he eases himself up from beneath the rift, hands pressed against his knees as he stays hunched to avoid the blood rush from blacking out his vision. Around him, he can hear the beginning of clean up, the sound of organized chaos as everyone starts to pick up and ready to go home to lick their wounds. He straightens slowly, feeling exhausted and wrung out as he looks out on the dimly lit wreckage of what was once Central Park.

"Loki?"

Steve Rogers is making his way over through the clumps of dirt and grass that the chaos has kicked up, some of it still filled with live worms. Loki can see one of the dirty things wriggling just next to where Steve puts his right boot, squirming obscenely even though it's been cut almost in half. The sight makes something twist in Loki's gut, and he lifts his hand without thinking about it, the worm catching aflame like an ant underneath a cruel child's magnifying glass. Steve jumps, surprised, glancing down at the smouldering worm and then to Loki, whose hand is still raised as if frozen.

"What was that?"

Loki blinks, little black spots dancing across his vision. "I don't know," he hears himself say in that tiny, almost childish voice that he's more used to hearing as he reaches the bottom of a lonely liquor bottle than in any kind of company. "Is Thor -"

Steve motions to Thor's unmistakeable figure helping some civilian underneath a sparking street lamp, the Captain's face is a mirage of concern and uncertainty, jaw working as he tries to sort his own words when Loki doesn't immediately move or react. In truth, Loki cannot trust himself to move on his own just yet, the adrenaline of battle and panic draining slowly to be replaced by more aches and pains. Idly, Loki wonders at what he must look like. He hasn't dared look in a mirror since last week, has bathed only in the constant dimness of his quarters. A gust of wind, pungent with the smell of broken sewage lines, blows across them, and Loki blinks more black splotches out of his eyes.

"Take me to him."

The Captain bites his lip but obeys, taking hold of Loki's arm in a firm grasp and letting Loki pretend he isn't being half-supported off the field of battle. Pretending is very important, Loki knows, because it's not so vicious as an outright lie that it takes energy, nor is it so cruel a balm as hope. No, pretending gives comfort where there is none to be had, fills in the gaps that open anew and entirely new in his chest with as temporary a patch as the one that covers the tear in reality above their heads. 

He lets Thor gather him up, lets himself sink his weight into his brother's chest, and pretends, like he has come to do, that this is somewhere nice.

 

It is rare he dreams these days.

Once, he had dream upon dream each time he closed his eyes, full of colour and noise and light. His dreams had been the things of visions, bordering upon prophecy, and often times, as he grew from a boy to a man, he had feared sleep, indulging it only as a necessity because of the great and terrible things he was sure to find there.

Now, as the months have worn on and the rift grown larger, stronger, he only dreams of darkness. He knows not if it is simply because he has no energy left to spend on dreams, nor if the only future left is the very end. Perhaps this is a doomed universe as some of the literature he's found has suggested. Perhaps he is merely overspent and stripped dry. Loki does not know, and that, more than the lack of dreams, makes him fear.

"How long has it been?"

Tony Stark doesn't even glance up from his work station, moving numbers and holograms of parts about the surface. "Since when?"

Loki lifts a hand, pressing the tips of his fingers over his right eye to force his sight to focus on the ever shifting words of the grimoire on his lap. "Since all of this began."

This makes Tony look up sharply, although it's very brief before his eyes back to the work at hand. "Eight months come Sunday," he answers, and there's a tightness to his voice that Loki is becoming familiar with hearing. "Have you lost track of time again?"

"It happens when I am constantly wandering," Loki says, and he knows his temper is showing, even as he concentrates on deciphering the swimming words in front of him.

"It happens when you're not sleeping," Tony says with open exasperation. "I would know."

"We don't have much time left," Loki answers, and he means for it to come out angry, but it just sounds thin and bruised, much as he guesses he's begun to look now that he hasn't the energy left to spend on even the simplest glamours; he avoids mirrors as much as he can these days. "The tear is becoming too wide to patch."

Tony does not call him on that lie, doesn't press home the obvious that it is Loki who is fast becoming inadequate to patch the rift long enough to buy them a little bit more time to try to find a way to fix it. Loki turns a page with his left hand, the words squirming anew, like the worm he'd fried against Steve's boot what feels like an age ago. The memory makes him feel strangely nauseous.

At some point later, Bruce comes in, redressed and recovered from his last Hulking out, moving to start his own end of their research at the neighboring station. Loki only notices because he brings food: a bowl of frozen fries for Tony, grapes and a chunk of bread for Loki, frozen falafel and the same bread as Loki's for himself. Rations have been put in place, although Loki forgets if it was during the sixth or the seventh month; it was around that time that everything started to run together.

Beneath their feet, the ground rumbles. As one, they look up from their respective work, towards the massive screen on the wall that shows the ever-enlarging tear. Something massive seems to claw at the green swatch that seems like it's pasted over the opening in the universe, a bandage with frayed edges, runes scraggy at the corners. Once Loki would have wept in disgust at making such a shoddy piece of handiwork. Now, he finds himself inordinately proud when it holds, he, Tony, and Bruce sagging in relief as one.

He would laugh at how the mighty have fallen, would gloat upon the image of the Avengers so cowed if only for the undeniable fact that they are the mirror he wishes he could avoid.

 

When the rift does rip open just under a day later, Loki finds himself reduced to tears. They are bitter tears that streak down his face without his bidding, and he swipes angrily at them with the back of his heat-blistered hands. Above him, the tear in reality distorts and ripples, straining against Loki's newest handiwork, and the ground beneath his feet tremors weakly as if it's been beaten too many times.

"Hey," Steve's voice comes to Loki's right, close enough that they're almost touching. "You alright there?"

Loki shakes his head because there isn't a point in lying when he's wiping tears off his face and sniffing back mucus in hitching sobs. Part of Loki, the coldly rational part that Loki sometimes wants to encompass his being and other times just wants to rip out, notes that he's having a minor emotional breakdown. He's had them before with increasing frequency since Thor's failed coronation and the loss of Loki's own foundations. They had happened a few times before that, when Loki was very young, at times from which his mind still skitters away from in panic just to know they exist. It's those pockets of memory that Loki wishes he could convince himself are simply forgotten, but he knows they are there even if he cannot approach the actual content, like black spots on a white canvas that will come out with cleaner but reveal something more underneath.

Steve takes a deep, steadying breath. "Do you want me to get Thor?"

It's all Loki can do to swallow the hiccuping sob that wants to make itself known. The tears are coming steadily now, and he gropes briefly to his side for something to hold onto as the world seems to contract upon itself. Panic, he recognizes. Panic is such an ugly thing. A hand catches his, and it's just too small to be Thor's. Steve, then. Steve, who hated Loki, who humiliated him in the middle of the square in Germany, who saw what evil lurked inside. Steve, who is too golden for a mortal and, like Thor, too good for a failed universe.

"Hey," Steve says, and his voice is gentle and soft, "it's okay."

It rips a laugh out of Loki, a sharp, terrible sound that lasts for a brief, horrible moment before Loki finally dissolves, weeping in earnest. There are no more cameras, no more of that ridiculous media that used to be everywhere during these events; everyone knows its better to stay as far away from the rift as they can. Loki doesn't know what he would do if more than just the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. saw. 

At this point, all he has left is his pride.

 

Grapes, bread, and a slab of fresh beef, seared and juicy. Loki feels saliva fill his mouth at the sight even before the scent reaches his nose. He doesn't know the last time he had fresh meat. It must have been long before the beginning of this, perhaps when he was still on the run. That meat had been almost certainly stolen. This -

"You've been assigned priority rations," Banner explains from the foot of the hospital bed.

Loki swallows, closes his eyes. The image of the beef remains in his eyes even closed, so he opens them again, saliva sour in his mouth. What had he thought: that he had pride? This just shows how little of it is actually real, that he is so easily reduced to the most basic of animal instincts at the sight of something beyond what he has grown used to receiving.

"And Thor?"

Something passes over Bruce's face, and if Loki was anything of what he once was, he would know what that look was. But it is gone too fast for Loki to sharpen his sluggish focus upon it, and Bruce shrugs, expressionless. The same, then. Once, to be favored in anything over Thor would have sent a thrill through Loki's veins. Now, it stabs something deep and barely acknowledged in Loki's chest. He eats mechanically, clearing every morsel from the tray. 

"He says Asgardians do not need to eat often," Bruce says after Loki begins to eat, tasting nothing.

"The dimness of mortals never ceases to amaze me," Loki says, barely more than a whisper, meat sitting heavy in his stomach, unfamiliar to his body; he fears that he may become nauseous. "Let me alone."

He leaves the infirmary as soon as he's certain that he will not actually be ill, stalking past the vague protests of the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors and earning a wilting look from Bruce when he comes out of one of the other rooms to see what the commotion is about. Loki ignores it all, sweeps in what must look like a fine temper through the metal wall that once would have been a prison but have somehow become close to a home. Once, not so long ago if he lets himself acknowledge it, such a show would have sent Asgardian servants scattering. Now, it only earns him queer mortal looks before he can slam the door of his quarters on them.

With the closing of the door, the will to even imitate anger drains from him, and it is all Loki can do to crawl into the bed he's come to call his own, pulling the pelts that Thor snuck him from Asgard around himself. They smell slightly musty and need to be aired out, but there is no time for that, no careful hands and perfumes to care for them. Loki swallows, his mind wandering places he does not want to go, and chooses to sleep instead of cry.

He's done enough of that already.

 

Someone is stroking his hair. Light, careful touches, just the tips of the fingers barely there. It is such an familiar feeling, but it has been so long, and he is so tired. That is the only reason he asks as he does:

"Mother?"

The fingers still, and Loki know he's made a mistake. That draws him out of the last of his sleep, makes him open his eyes. The room is dark, but he knows Thor's form better than he knows his own. Thor's hand remains over the crown of his head, a soft, tentative weight. It makes Loki's heart clench.

"You still consider her mother?"

Loki closes his eyes. He cannot see Thor's face for the room is too dark, but he knows what he would see from the tone of voice: raw, open, tentative hope searching. There will be pain there, too, because Thor has come to know and understand pain in these long months, perhaps beginning before. It is a change he is not pleased to see, no matter what Loki once tried to tell himself.

"I suppose," he says, and his voice is weak even to his own ears.

Thor shifts, and Loki knows instinctively now that it is to get water. This position is becoming too familiar even as Loki accepts the cold glass and lets Thor's touch remain on his wrist to make sure he does not spill. Once, Loki would have knocked it all away; now, he knows he needs the hydration and his hands tremble too much for him to be certain he won't end up dribbling like an idiot on his bedding.

"I wish," Thor says, carefully, softly, but with great weight, "for you to return in my place to Asgard."

Loki does choke then, badly and enough to sputter out upon his and Thor's hands. He coughs for a long while, mind reeling and uncomprehending, and Thor, wet hand and dry, holds him to steady him in this fit. It reminds Loki for a single, blinding moment of a rare bout of childhood illness that he had suffered in his fourth century. It had lasted long enough that Thor was removed from their nursery while it was cleansed, and Loki had spent several weeks in Eir's constant care. The memory turns what anger might have been to bitter sorrow instead.

"Thor," he hears himself say, feels his fingers curl into the thin Midgardian cotton Thor wears, "no."

But Thor does not move, will not be moved. Loki can feel it in his skin, the way the dirt of Midgard has seeped in and changed him. There is no seidr to draw it out; it is too deep and true a change. Thor breathes out, slowly, and Loki lets him pull them close.

"Yes," Thor says, soft and true, and Loki's will breaks and he weeps, knowing what has been done.

 

They stand in the shadow of the rift, newly repaired by Loki's hand, Heimdall's gaze upon Loki's skin for the first time in many years. Thor is dressed in flannel and jeans that is well-loved and well-worn, Loki in princely finery that he has been so long without it feel alien upon his skin. It is not unlike his armour, but it is softer fabrics, different seidr woven into the threads. He keeps his helmet tucked against his side.

"This is not the choice I wanted you to make," he says to Thor, his voice too open and plain, but he is too worn for anything else.

"Asgard needs an heir," Thor answers, and his lips quirk, sad but always, always true. "I have a duty here."

"Thor," Loki starts, but he can hear the rumble of the world-travelling magic, can feel Heimdall's gaze hard on his back.

"Brother," Thor says.

Loki opens his lips, golden seidr in his eyes, his own answer lost to the wind.

 

Odin has grown grim and Frigga solemn. Loki does not care to think about how he has changed, not as he once more walks the halls that he never belonged to but must now serve. He takes his meals alone in his old quarters still stripped of his favorite pelts, left behind on Midgard in the haste of Thor's decision. He studies for hours in the libraries but finds no more to assist Thor and the plight of Midgard than he did when he was residing there. Twice, in moments of weakness, he chances a moment to gaze out over the lands, seemingly dimmed now in the absence of its golden prince.

Frigga comes to him after the second time, entering Loki's quarters unannounced to find him already deep in his cups. Loki has never been given to drink in the manner that Thor and his friends are, but he has to admit that he has developed a rather nasty habit of drinking far too much alone. It is not a habit he has had to acknowledge since the rift, too stripped dry of anything else as he has been, but looking out over Asgard, knowing Thor will not -

"You've had quite enough," Frigga murmurs, gentle and warm, and Loki does not fight her as she eases the goblet from his hand.

She does not touch him beyond that, and he is glad for it. Asgard is cold and forbidding enough as it is, and Loki, in the honesty that alcohol allows him, knows he wouldn't be able to stand it from her. She would prefer Thor to be here rather than the false son, no matter the extent of her kindness. They sit in silence until light begins to creep into Loki's chambers, and a servant arrives to take the most empty wine carafe and goblet away. Frigga rises, and Loki does not look away from his sightless gaze on the wall.

"Loki," she begins, but he does not turn to her and she departs.

 

The rift grows wider on Midgard now that Loki is no longer there to patch it. Loki peers into the scrying pools in the evenings when his research amounts to its usual nothings, wine goblet in hand as he watches Thor and the rest of those he called enemies and almost comrades wage war against an endless siege. If he's had enough to drink, he lets himself search their faces for resentment, but he only finds exhaustion.

"I cannot go to you," he finds himself telling Tony as he watches the mortal working feverishly away in his workshop. "You cannot tell me what day it is."

He catches whispers in the walls of those who think he cannot hear that Loki Trickster has become a wraith. He supposes there is some truth to that, considering that he has neglected to change his work tunic for the last three days despite bathing. Loki remembers he used to care so much for his appearance. It seems like a thousand years ago.

"I will watch you die," he says, when the fourth monster falls through the rift in a single week, and he is drunk enough that he is leaning into the scrying pool. "I will watch and I will remember. I am a god. I will give you that."

It is a cruel comfort, now that he has resigned himself to caring.

 

Appropriately, it rains in Asgard the day that Clint dies, a massive claw slicing his head from his body. A swift death, only a flash of surprise and not enough time to register pain. He fell in battle, defending his world. It is not a bad death.

"You may not go to them," Odin says, even though Loki has not moved from the scrying pool, not for hours now.

Loki does not respond. He does not need to, not to know the truth of Odin's words, the seidr that Thor wrought by blood oath tethering Loki to Asgard like no prison or punishment ever could. A blood oath made from love, worn less like a collar more of a cloak, the ultimate protection that anyone could ever give another. Even Odin cannot strip him of it, must bow before that sort of sacrifice. Loki should never have sent Thor to fetch him those books from the oldest parts of Asgard's libraries.

"You underestimated him," Odin murmurs, and Loki imagines that there is regret in his voice; it makes him smile, ghastly as it is these days.

"We both did," Loki says, and it is like nails over slate, the first time he has spoken in many days.

He leaves the scrying pool, drifts past Odin who stands in the shadows of the evening on unsteady legs. A year ago, Loki would not have dreamed of showing Odin his back, but there is no point in his paranoia any more, not now that he wears the blood protection that Thor threaded into his hair and over his scalp as he lay unconscious on Midgard. The singular cunning act of Thor Thunderer, the stolen moment of silence after lightning. 

Loki stops before the old nursery doors, pushes them open with a creak of hinges long disused. Dust has gathered over the floor stripped of plush carpets, the chests filled with toys long locked up. Loki gazes over the small cot nearest the eastern window to the cradle still filled with bedding beneath the western, his bare feet leaving small clouds of dust in his wake. He settles in the rocking chair that Loki remembers Frigga often sitting in, rests his hands over the curved arms with their knobbed ends. There are teething marks on the left, small and blunt: Thor's teeth as Loki's milk teeth had been strangely sharp. Or not so strangely; he is Jotunn after all. His left hand tightens.

"Brother," he whispers, begs, but it is covered in dust.

 

Asgard is such a beautiful prison.

Loki does not look to the scrying pool, does not return to his rooms and his wine. He spends his days at court beside Odin's right hand, goes walking with Frigga in the afternoon sun. The libraries see him in the evenings, tearing through all of Asgard's knowledge like a whirlwind, no longer any direction for it to go. On the rare nights he does fall into sleep, there are no more dreams. The servants and courtiers begin to whisper he is changed; it has been a long time since he has heard his lesser names.

"What news of Midgard, Heimdall?"

It is an indulgence, to walk the still-ruined bridge to the rotten corpse of the Bifrost. Loki knows it would trouble Frigga if she knew he was here, but he does not care for her opinion, not in this. Heimdall's deep, impassive face gazes ever forward, ever beyond, still as it was frozen in Loki's ice.

"The world grows weaker," the Gatekeeper intones, words Loki already knows.

"And what of Thor?"

"The Golden Son grows ever more weary," is the answer, again what Loki knows. "He has lost another companion, the mortal who houses the monster."

"Bruce Banner," Loki says, although it is unnecessary and these days he no longer enjoys speaking.

"The others will fall soon," Heimdall continues as if Loki had not spoken. "The broken threads will swallow the world."

"Blood price," Loki finds himself yelling later to the library shelves stripped of books in his fury and desperation. "He took all the books on blood price!"

His rage has brought several guards running and a couple running away. Loki does not care, hurling one of the ancient study chairs against a shelf, toppling it into his neighbor to create a cascade. The resulting canopy of destruction nearly swallows the anguished noises that escape him, even as he smashes a desk, an ornamental vase, all things older than himself -

"Loki!"

Odin's voice, harsh and commanding, and Loki roars in response, higher as he has always been given to, and throws all of his anger back at him. But he is weakened, grieving early, still nowhere near the strength he gave away on Midgard, and Odin's spear across his face draws blood and forces him to his knees. The strike draws the wretched sounds from his chest, rips them from his throat, drags them down his tongue. Blood and tears drip onto ancient carpet, stain ruined threads. Blood that will do no good, not any more.

Hands, strong but gnarled grip his shoulders. "Stand up."

He has not lost so much of himself to do as he's told. The second strike to the back of his head is a relief.

 

Odin confines him to his rooms after that, does not let him near the scrying pool, bars wine or any liquor from being brought to him. Frigga brings him books and news from Heimdall; she gifts him new pelts and beseeches him to let Eir visit. Loki has had enough of medicines and poultices, the itch of IV needles under his skin. He sits in the shadows cast by the sun through his windows and lets the wound to his face heal messily.

"It will scar," Frigga says, touching his cheek.

"I do not care," he says, and his voice is rough and dull; he has refused the last six meals placed on his desk, each since the news of Natasha Romanov's death.

She does not call him on the lie. Instead, she smooths the pelts around his shoulders as he sits hunched in his bed, the same one that he learned first to shift his form in for amusements other than his childhood tricks. He wonders if Thor has taken the pelts from Loki's bed on Midgard for himself or if he has left them there, untouched as if Loki would return. It would be the latter, of course: Thor always held out hope even when he knew there was none.

"Loki," Frigga murmurs, and it is the commanding tone, soft but moreso than anything Odin could hope to conjure. "You must eat."

The evening's meal is lamb and stewed vegetables, hearty, thick bread with honey, apples and grapes, a flagon of water with summer berries. The sight of it all makes his stomach churn, and he turns away, unwilling to be sick on Frigga's dress. It would be putrid, just acid and dark bile, and she would never be able to salvage the delicate fabric. A soft touch, cool, careful fingers against his hair. Loki shuts his eyes, his face a canvas for all of his pain. 

"The grapes," he acquiesces. "I will eat the grapes."

His hands shake but not badly enough that he cannot feed himself, Frigga's hand gentle against his hair. The next morning's meal is sparse, water and grapes and a thin slice of bread. He looks at it for a long time before turning away.

 

Tony dies next.

Odin allows Loki to watch the funeral in the scrying pool, a small, intimate affair for a mortal who was as close to a god as Midgardians could get. Loki watches Thor, still golden and strong but his armour worn at the elbows and cape tattered by the edges, help Steve lower the casket into the ground. No pyre for Tony Stark: he would be returned to the earth he loved.

Even though the funeral is short and takes only simple seidr, Loki finds himself drained and dizzy as the remainders of the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. finally begin to trickle away. He sits for a long moment with his eyes closed on the low bench that frames the pool, head bent low to calm the disorientation threatening to tilt him or his stomach onto the floor. He will not show any more weakness than he must before Odin.

"Your self-pity is unbecoming."

Loki laughs, a low, choking sound. He does not open his eyes.

 

He feels it, deep in his soul, when Thor falls.

It is like a knife flaying him open from the inside, and he is on his hands and knees in the middle of the Eastern Garden, Frigga's sharp cry of surprise the only thing that keeps him from losing himself. The blood bond writhes under his flesh, and he thinks he must be screaming, but he cannot discern his own voice from the clamour in his head.

"Thor," he cries, begs. "Brother -"

The seidr, red and green, burns, turns the grass and late summer blossoms beneath his hands to ash. It tears through him, a crack of lightning, and he wails, sight and senses torn open -

" _Please -_ "

But there is no more.

 

He wakes, aching, blank-minded, and dry-mouthed, in Eir's care, healing seidr running into his wrists like Midgardian needles. Loki isn't sure how long he lies like that, mind uncomprehending despite knowing with dull horror what has come to pass. He suspects that he has been drugged.

"Quite heavily," Eir says, and Loki guesses he must have made the last observation aloud. "You have always been a difficult patient."

He has no energy or will to defend himself, not even to muster a wince as she presses a stinging poultice to the half-healed gash on his cheek. It would have healed on its own if he was half of what he once was, but Loki doesn't know anymore what he is. He does not know what blood price Thor paid for him.

"Midgard," he manages as she moves to his hands, bandaged and numb from whatever he'd done. "What -" but he cannot find the words.

She stops, considering carefully, before she turns her gaze to his. "Lord Thor saved it," she says, bald and ungentle. "Because the two of you were linked, you suffered backlash."

"Were."

"Yes."

He forces enough seidr into his hands to blackout from the pain.

 

Again, Loki is confined to his rooms, Odin's voice echoing off the walls of his skull.

There is no body, no way to send Thor to Valhalla. Loki stands on his balcony overlooking the Eastern Gardens, half of which are burned away from his seidr under Thor's blood. It will be a grave, Loki suspects, the last true monument to Thor in his homeland. A few times he catches a servant or guard looking up at him on the balcony, and he looks back until they look away.

"You're scaring everyone."

Loki hands scream at him for it, but he manages to pour himself a goblet of wine. "I didn't before?"

Frigga sighs, sitting by the fireside, unlit as it is. Loki does not know why he has been allowed wine again, but he does not intend to get drunk until she has left. The goblet glows gold briefly, no poisons or additives to be found. Not that it matters; he was already bringing it to his lips.

The wine takes the edge off the world, dims Asgard's brightens, lessens the press of what has never been his home. Frigga stays with him even after he is clearly drunk, weaving when he moves from his desk to his bed, her gaze deep into the unlit fire and far away. Grieving, his mind supplies, never enough liquor to fully calm it and pull it away from truth. That's why he's so good at lying, that he has always been aware of what is and what isn't and what lies between. Loki laughs, low and awful, and presses his fingers against his eyes. He is not sure which stings more.

When he wakes up again, it is late morning, and there is a new, light meal with water mixed with mint. Loki ignores it and sits in his bath for over an hour, unfeeling of the water; he wonders if it is even possible for him to catch a chill, Jotunn that he is. He feels weak and dizzy by the time he climbs out and dresses. His court attire, deep green and delicate gold, is ill-fitting, has been since Thor forced him to return, but Loki has not sent it in. He does not care, but he knows he must appear in court this afternoon.

"Send me to Midgard."

Odin glares at him from the Golden Throne, angry and open and weary. Loki cares about nothing at all, so he stares back, formal robes hanging from him as if he has truly become a ghost.

"I wish to retrieve what there is of Thor. I would retrieve what I had left."

Odin smiles, ghastly and humourless. "The blood bond has not faded. You will burn for each moment you are away from Asgard."

Loki feels himself smile back. "I can stand pain."

 

Steve Rogers greets him when Loki stumbles on the scarred Midgardian earth. The pain is intense, burning just as promised, but still manageable enough that Loki is able to draw himself up, formal attire shifting awkwardly on his wasted frame. Steve's eyes have aged beyond mortal years.

"You're here for Thor's things, right?"

The mortals have packed Thor and Loki's things so very neatly, almost reverently. There are only four boxes, two full of books, one for Loki's pelts, one for what remains of Thor's armor and cape, even Mjolnir lost. Loki does not have the strength to search if they have hidden anything, and he knows Steve would not be willingly dishonest. The small, forearm-length box is all that is left of Thor.

"I know that Thor made it so you could not stop him," Steve says, the words sudden and rushed; it makes Loki look at him through the agony, "but could you come, perhaps -"

"You are the only one left," Loki says, and it is slow and almost clumsy, as if Eir's sedatives are still in his blood. "I understand."

And although it still burns, he holds out his hand.

 

Heimdall gazes at them, through them. "You should not have brought him here."

Loki leans against his own knees, Steve's hand on his heaving shoulders. He will not be ill on the Bifrost's floor, will not stain it any more than he already has. He does not remember how he was when he arrived after Thor paid the first blood price, but he vaguely remembers shouting, tugging hands. The silence that settles as he regains himself is better.

"I won't stay if I'm not wanted," Steve says after a long moment.

"No," Loki says, and he makes himself rise, hand passing over his chest, smoothing out wrinkles in his jerkin. "Come."

They walk the Bifrost, Loki's hand on Steve's elbow. It would appear that he guides the Captain, but, really, Loki is not certain he has enough strength to remain upright. He looks straight ahead to where the guards stand at the bridge's mouth, watching Steve look up, down, and around from the corner of his eye.

"Thor chose Midgard over this?"

"I never," Loki murmurs, and his voice is rough, splintered, "claimed to understand my brother."

Steve glances to him, taking him in against Asgard's golden lands. "You're ill."

"I grieve," Loki corrects as the guards turn to face them, straight-backed and wary; he straightens, draws on fake strength to stand still and tall. "Send for the Allfather. I come bearing the last of Thor, Prince of Asgard."

 

He guides Steve to the throne room before Frigga pulls him away from the court proceedings, her grip on his wrist hard enough to shatter mortal bone. His head feels fuzzy and his body only half-awake, and he realizes too late that she had taken him back to Eir's rooms.

"I will be fine," Loki says, even as Frigga pushes him to sit upon one of the healing bed. "I wish to hear -"

"That will be another day," Frigga says, and Loki feels Eir's light, ungentle hand against the crook of his elbow. "You are little more than a ghost."

There is no choice: he would not be able to escape, not without hurting Frigga further. He can see the strain written in her face, the new lines by her eyes and the sides of her mouth. Loki lets Eir guide him to lie on his back, watches the shift of seidr readings above him. As a boy, he used to dance his own seidr in with Eir's orange glow, Thor giggling delightedly even as Eir reprimanded him. The memory makes Loki close his eyes.

When he wakes, he is in his chambers once more, pelts wrapped gently around him and Frigga's perfume still hanging in the air. The dull pull of sedative makes his movements sloppy, and he stumbles against the side of his washbasin, hand splashing the cooled water over the side. He cannot remember the last time he felt well, since he felt enough himself to let his mind wander to the further corner than just what task is at hand. Once, he would have found this frightening; now, it has grown too familiar.

There is no guard at his door, so either Odin did not think he would wake so soon or he is too consumed in his own grief to care. Loki walks slowly, careful as a drunkard even though he has had no wine, through the halls, trailing his fingers along the ancient walls, pressing against towering pillars. His head remains slightly hazy, the healing seidr still beneath his skin, but he has enough of his wits about him to find his way to the guest quarters, can sense the watchful seidr in the walls outside the right room. There may not be a guard at the door, but Odin is not so foolish as to leave a guest brought by Loki unguarded.

Steve is awake, his face one of emptiness and loss quickly hidden away when Loki enters unannounced. A late evening meal of roasted pheasant, potatoes, and dark broiled greens sits half-eaten on the empty writing desk. Steve stands from his seat upon the guest bed, but Loki makes a cutting motion with his right hand; he can manage to make his way to the chaise lounge by the fire.

"You are still in your uniform," Loki finds himself saying, stating the obvious. "Has Odin been so remiss as to not provide you sleeping clothes?"

Steve blinks before he shakes his head. "No, I -" he starts before he cuts himself off, motioning to the low bench near to the curtains that lead to the bath where a stack of neatly folded Asgardian garments sit. "I just haven't bathed yet."

"Has someone been in to draw a bath?"

A nod, a small quirk of the lips. "Just before you came. I haven't had a bath drawn in a long time."

Loki lets himself recline, rests his hands over his chest. They are no longer bandaged except for his left forefinger and thumb, the moulted, healing skin thick enough now to be safely exposed to the air and not risk infection, but they still throb he if lets them rest at his sides for too long. He watches Steve rub his hands along his thighs in slow, circular motions, a childish soothing gesture, and does not feel shame for letting weakness show.

He breathes out. "You should bathe before the water turns cold."

Another nod, and Steve walks the distance between the bed and the curtained bath before he pauses, a flash of emotions across his face. Loki feels his lips tug, the first smile that hasn't felt like a carving knife in months.

"I will remain here, at least for the night."

Steve smiles, not large and bright, but real and lifts the curtain to undress before the hot water. Loki reaches up, pulls the throw hanging over the back of the chaise, and tucks it over himself as the fire crackles, well-fed and warm.

He sleeps.

 

Loki wakes with a start, shadows dancing from the flames still burning securely in the fireplace. For a moment, he thinks he has had a nightmare; on the nights he is not either completely exhausted or utterly wasted, they are not uncommon. But then he hears a soft whimper and Loki remembers -

"Steve."

The whimper comes again, a strained, hurt animal sound. Loki curls the throw around his shoulders, eases himself to his feet to pad over to the guest bed. He hovers at the side, bad hand ready to extend.

"Steve."

Blue eyes snap open with a strangled gasp, a drowning man resurfacing for air. Loki is not surprised, remains standing by the side of the bed as Steve gulps airs, runs trembling hands through his hair, over sweating brow. But, because Steve Rogers is who he is, his breathing calms, and his shoulders slump, relaxing even though he perceives this of all things as a defeat.

"Loki," the mortal says, and he rubs tears out of his eyes.

"Yes," Loki murmurs.

Steve takes his hand, gentle and guiding, and Loki lowers himself to join the mortal in bed.

 

The morning audience is grim and all too silent. Loki sits on the chair that has come to occupy the space by Odin's right hand, an ancient, heavy thing that Loki thinks came from the library section on Valheim. If Loki was healthy, he would stand for the hours of the morning and afternoon audiences, but he is not and has been ordered to a chair. There will be no shows of strength, not in that way.

"He told you how Thor died," Loki says as the head merchant of the cattle market passes out of the throne room's doors.

Odin's lips thin. "This is not the time."

"I asked him," Loki points out. "He will not hide anything from me."

"He is a fool to have trusted you," and there is bite to Odin's tone.

Loki feels himself smile, blades slicing open his lips. "Do we speak of Thor or of Steve Rogers?"

Odin's gaze is sharp and piercing, but a widow from the river has entered the room, and it is masked as quickly as it came. She tells a tale of woe since her husband and younger daughter's untimely deaths from the winter illness that apparently passed through the low lands during the first months of the rift on Midgard. Loki sits forward in his chair, hands pressed open against his thighs, and he finds her eyes when they flick up, off the bottom step of the throne's dais.

"Why did you not come earlier," Loki inquires, the first time since Thor bound him to Asgard that he has spoken in an audience without being directly addressed, "before the harvest season drew to a close?"

Odin does not hide the reprimanding glare this earns Loki, but the widow does not notice, her eyes wide and hands clutching themselves. She is terrified to have actually been directly addressed, and Loki knows.

"You were humiliated," Loki says so that she does not have to, "to ask the Allfather for his help."

"I do not wish to be a burden."

"No subject is a burden," Odin intones, and he sound every inch the benevolent king, just the right amount of gentle comfort and remoteness. "You will have assistance this winter enough to get your house in order."

Loki stands once the widow is led from the room by the firm hand of a guard, ignores the looks that are surely cast his way, ignores the burn of Odin's eyes upon his back. He leaves through a servant door, moving slowly through the narrow passages and the startled, questioning gazes he encounters. He remembers exploring these passages with Thor when they were very young, before Odin knew of their adventures and taught them they were kings. The memory twists like a knife within his chest.

He finds Steve with Frigga in the Northern Gardens, beneath the golden apple trees. They sit with their backs to the palace, Steve's head bowed, Frigga's hands folded in her lap. As Loki nears, he can see there is red across Frigga's knees, and he knows that they have opened Thor's box.

Steve looks up first as Loki deliberately steps his heel against gravel. "Loki -"

"You left the audiences early," Frigga says, calm and cool but her eyes on the remains of her son.

"I was little more than a distraction," Loki answers, lowering himself to the grass to sit across them and the open box, a part of Thor's left vambrace and a flannel shirt still within; Loki forces his hands to lie flat against his knees. "Do you wish me to begin arranging the funeral ship?"

Steve's eyes flicker between the three of them: the Queen, the heir, the box. Loki knows he must look unnatural, folded in the grass but hands pressed flat and straight down. Frigga's hair falls into her face with her head bowed, her fingers soothing the tattered remnants of the cape she wove her first-born. Steve's throat moves in a long swallow.

"There is no body," Frigga murmurs. "There can be no ship."

 

"Would you like me to tell you how he died?"

Loki pours Steve a goblet of wine before one for himself. The early winter breeze sweeps through the open balcony, and Loki sets his glass down untouched to go close the curtains.

"Not yet," Loki says when he returns and picks up a stem of grapes, turning the ripe fruit over in his hands. "Tell me of Midgard."

They pass the evening like that, stories of rebuilding and new struggles that are born of it traded for tales that Loki once heard sung joyously in Thor's name and now will be part of a tragedy. It is bitter, but the wine and grapes are sweet, and that dulls it all to an almost comfortable nothing that Steve no doubtedly recognizes.

"A mortal ailment," Loki murmurs, casting his hand in a lazy arch over the wine, "but gods are such excellent examples."

"You really like your riddles," Steve smiles, achingly familiar with his blond hair and blue eyes.

"We are gods and kings," Loki answers before he realizes his slip; he feels his face turn ashen even as his tongue moves to correct it. "Were."

The smile has fled Steve's face, features grim in a way that was never Thor's, not even at the end. Loki lifts the goblet to his lips and empties it to drown the keening sound that threatens to escape him. Stupid, he moans inside of himself. Stupid.

"I am not Thor," Steve says, plain and open and so very mortal. "I can't be."

"You are Captain America," Loki murmurs, wretched as he sets the goblet down unceremoniously.

"Steve," the mortal corrects. 

Loki laughs, a sob. "Steve."

 

Odin finds him at the scrying pool, looking down at the makeshift memorial where Stark Tower used to be.

"The mortal has served his purpose. It is past time that he returned."

Loki smiles, a wide, terrible thing. "You are so quick to discard the last of your son."

"You are my son," Odin grits out, although Loki can see how much that admission costs him. "You are the last of Thor. The mortal is but a mortal; he will wither and die as is their lot."

Loki stands, black lights dancing across his vision, but he knows the waver in his stance puts him at an advantage here; there is nothing to predict or divine. "The spare is never intended to survive. That is all I have ever been until Thor made his fate. I know the words of the Norns as well as you."

The silence that reigns is heavy and bright, so Asgardian that it almost burns his skin. Loki does not flinch nor does he bow; there is no reason for him to here. Odin's eye is hard, dark flint with nothing to strike against.

"Sober up," Odin orders, "and join me for the afternoon audience."

Loki sneers after Odin's retreating back, waits until the heavy door thuds shut before sinking to his knees, trembling like a newborn foal. The scene of Midgard moves on beneath his gaze, and he leans so close to the surface of the water that he could almost fall in.

He is perfectly sober.

 

Late in the evening, Loki takes Steve through a servant's door, out of the palace, into the town. He holds onto Steve's hand to make sure they aren't separated in the night market, their head bent low to keep their faces from the fairy lights overhead. The first tavern they come to is inhabited by archers, so Loki moves onto the next to find Volstagg and Fandral already deep in their cups.

"Like you are one to judge," Fandral points out when Loki comes to stand before them, hood still up and after the nasty shock of Loki's presence passes. "The kitchen servants have no qualms telling how many casks you have emptied since returning."

"I never expect tongues to stay themselves," Loki murmurs, sitting in the empty spaces and motioning for Steve to do the same. "Steve, these are Fandral the Dashing and Volstagg the Valiant, two of Thor's greatest friends."

Greetings, subdued and low, go around the table. The barman sets down four tankards of ale, not bothering to look at the new faces at the table. Loki ghosts seidr over the man's shoulders, easing it into a mouth that opens with a low sigh. Volstagg glares.

"He is a longtime friend -"

"Tongues," Loki murmurs before raising his tankard with his left hand. "To Thor."

They cannot decline the toast and there is a clinking and sloshing of ale. Loki grimaces on the bitter hops, but it will do its work just as well as wine if not as sweet. Steve glances at him, searching, and he is nothing like Thor.

"Tell us how Thor died."

Volstagg chokes on his ale, coughing and sputtering while Fandral turns white. Steve isn't surprised, simply sets his tankard down. A captain of his people indeed. It almost makes Loki smile.

"He died defending Earth," Steve begins, but a thought seems to strike him, his eyes roving around the tavern, over Asgardians and Jotunn, and he corrects himself. "He died well."

 

The walk back to the palace is slow, almost plodding. Steve holds Loki's hand, half to keep Loki from toppling over to lie in a gutter and half because he does not know the way back. Loki dances seidr between their fingers, a static-like warmth grounding him.

"You sure they'll be fine getting home?" Steve asks, glancing back to where they'd come.

"Volstagg's wife will find them," Loki hears himself answer, low and languid. "She will wipe their mouths and pat them off to bed. It is the same comedy."

"It's not a story," Steve says, soft and firm. "This is your life."

Loki throws his head back in a laugh. A few people glance over and then away, no recognition except for drunkenness in their gazes. Steve takes a couple quicker steps so that they walk in sync, parallel to the stars and the ground. Loki grins hugely and pulls Steve into the shadow of a closed livestock booth.

"You are wise, mortal," Loki murmurs, resting his hands against Steve's chest, his hood slipped from his head. "Wise without arrogance as only a mortal can be. You do not live long enough to see your knowledge take its price."

A great sigh lifts Steve's chest beneath Loki's hands. "You don't need to disguise yourself," he murmurs, and his grip on Loki's shoulders is kind. "I know you loved him. He loved you, too. I don't know if it's different here, but for us mortals, it's natural to give everything for love."

"When did you mortals forget your place?" Loki asks, and his voice sounds strange to his own ears. "It is enough he died well."

Silence descends for a long moment, and Loki can feel Steve's heart beating steadily beneath his palm, chest rising and falling with each breath. Loki can feel the rush of blood and air, could curl himself into this unmistakeable evidence of life. But then Steve sighs again, such a mortal thing, and Loki is reminded that this is not Thor.

"I'm sorry you came to care for us," Steve whispers, and he is so honest and real. "But that doesn't mean I'm not a little bit glad, too."

 

Frigga comes with Loki to the Bifrost, her face drawn but shoulders back and strong. Steve looks up and around as he did when he first arrived, mortal eyes drinking in the golden world with wonder.

"I would have you visit," Frigga says as they come before Heimdall, "from time to time."

"I would be honored, ma'am," Steve admits, solemn and true.

"It is time," Loki says, and Steve takes his hand.

Heimdall puts them down next to the temporary tents set up in the rubble of Central Park that are what is left of S.H.I.E.L.D. The blood bond flares bright beneath Loki's skin, and it is all he can do to not gasp. Steve helps him up off his knees, to stand again on the ground that claimed his brother.

"Until next time," Steve says, his lips lifting in a pained, desperate grin.

Loki does not know what he says as Heimdall rips him away.

 

There develops a routine.

Loki wakes, the sun over the horizon. He throws water into his face, dresses. Frigga has ordered his clothing refitted, and he has received new armour. Odin presides over the morning audience, Loki standing two paces behind his right hand. He takes lunch by the scrying pool, gazing down upon Midgard. Then there are the afternoon audiences and matters of counsel. Loki takes his evenings either with Frigga or alone, his pelts returned to his room and draped over his bed. Some nights he drinks; others he spends ghosting around the palace and lower lands; and still others he finds himself back at the scrying pool, leaning into the lives of those that will pass so soon.

"You brought me to this," he tells the gold casket that now holds Thor's remains, kept at a place of honor in a special room in the treasury. "You dared."

The whispers in the wall still call him names, but he hears less and less of his childhood titles and more and more associated with the grief that has befallen the royal household. Odin and Frigga do not show or acknowledge their grief, cannot, so it falls to their heir, the once fey child who grew to a madman, to shoulder it, the cost paid for the Nine Realm's security. Wraith, grim and pale, liesmith still but without his old cruelty. Thor's blood was strong enough to alter Loki's reputation.

"Are you happy?" Loki asks the rain as another fall sweeps in. "Are you?"

It becomes known, after the first few years, that Loki speaks to Thor, to his tomb and the storms. Loki isn't sure who spied him in his privacy, but there are eyes and ears everywhere if he cares to look. Some mutter it's just another iteration of his madness; others murmur that the blood magic gave him a connection to the dead.

"Perhaps it did," he tells Steve's image in the scrying pool as the mortal works a punching bag. "I am still fixated on mortals."

The Eastern Gardens have been repaired, but Loki does not go to them despite how they used to be his favorite. Frigga tells him that she has planted sweet william and dahlia, and Loki sends a servant on Thursday mornings to pick a vaseful for the scrying room. They wilt in the water, even though Loki knows it would be a simple spell to keep them alive indefinitely. That they wilt seems fitting.

"It makes sense now, the Midgardian tales where I produce a daughter half young and half dead," he tells Odin after a particularly bitter counsel. "They craft stories more telling than the Norns themselves."

It earns him a strike across the face that swells and then molts into a black-purple bruise. The sight of it makes Frigga inhale sharply and she presses her fingers to his skin, blue seidr ready even as Loki pulls away.

"I want him to see what he did," Loki hisses through his teeth. "That I will attend the public audiences so dressed -"

"You have grown so cruel," Frigga whispers and that hurts more than anything else has in a long while. "Am I not your mother?"

He lets her press her fingers against his cheek, foreign seidr knitting under his skin. The sensation makes his stomach roll, and he knows she can feel him crying, even in the dark of his rooms.

"Shh," she whispers, palm against his cheek. "I am here."

 

On the fifth anniversary of Thor's death, Loki is fitted for new vambraces. It is by Odin's order, just as Loki's return to the palace training grounds in the spring were, and Loki stands still as a statue as the measurements of his wrists and forearms are taken. They do not ask what he wishes carved into the metal; they do not need to.

He puts on the storm-covered gold before Thor's tomb, holds his hands open to it with all of his seidr at his fingertips. He does not know how long he stands there like that, fully armoured for the first time since Midgard, knows it will be long enough for the story to spread through the palace, into the lands. He does not care.

"Look, brother," he says, harsh and wretched. "Look at what you've done."

 

In the eighth year, Odin begins to speak of retirement.

At first, Loki thinks it a particularly cruel joke, another knife in their regular backstabbing and dance of words. Odin uses the same language as he did when he spoke of putting Thor on the Golden Throne in what feels like so long ago, the same lines of how he grows weary of governing day and night, how he is not the man he used to be. Loki has a biting response to each strike, enough to earn a few more bruises and one memorable bloody eye. The eye earns mutterings in the walls, skittish glances from guards. Sif even declines Loki's offer to spar.

"Go to Eir," she says, lips thin and face drawn.

Loki rolls his eyes even though it makes hot pain shoot through his skull. "Is my appearance so displeasing?"

"You're mad," she hisses, but there's such pain in her eyes that Loki knows he must back off or risk a real scene.

Eir chides him, gives him a litany of warnings that are becoming far too familiar. Loki remembers being a sickly child in the early part of his youth, and there is some irony that, in what should be the prime of his life, he has seen more of Eir in the past eight years than for the majority of his childhood. Loki has lost control over his life ever since his folly at Thor's coronation a decade ago.

But despite that, despite everything: "You will be crowned king come summer."

Loki cannot help himself, the goblet in his hand clattering down the dais, red wine splattering over gold. The pain of the statement is exquisite, and he thinks for a moment that Thor has died again, that he simply lost his mind in the Eastern Gardens and is only now waking up. He takes leave of his own mind and body for a full moment, long enough that the crack of Gungnir to the small of his back is unexpected enough that it send him tumbling down the steps of the Golden Throne. He thinks, as he shifts himself out of habit into a defensive kneel, that it is a strange kindness for Odin to rob him of a chance to further react.

"Is this not what you wanted?" Odin asks from the top of the dais, risen from the throne. "Is this not what your machinations aimed towards?"

"No," Loki says, on his knees, swallows. "Yes."

"I raised you alongside each other," Odin says, a strange exposition that claws along Loki's brain. "I moved the worlds to see you grow and flourish. This is the sort of king I chose to become."

The venom comes easily. "You are a fool."

Gungnir thuds against the gold and Loki has learned to flinch. "No more than you," Odin snarls, "heir to the Golden Throne."

 

The preparations run at dizzying speeds, Odinsleep only a couple weeks away, put off as it has been for so long. Loki spends the late evenings at the entrance of Thor's tomb, sometimes standing, more often on his knees, his work or night tunic pooled around his knees.

"There are no lessons for him to teach me," Loki murmurs the first evening, his entire body numb. "There is no more to steal."

"Damn you," he rages on another, his hair still wet from the bath and tears. "How dare you leave me here!"

"Please," he begs, the night Odin sets Gungnir in his hands, to have it learn his name, "brother, _please_ -" but he doesn't even know what he begs for.

During the day, as the golden world moves and shifts around him, there is no more room for his weakness. Odin seems to stoop lower each day that the Odinsleep is put off, and the hours carve new lines into Frigga's face, once so smooth of age. Loki has come to expect the blows Odin doles out in place of advice, but the sight of age on Frigga's skin cuts deeper, tightens the chains that lie beneath the Golden Throne, and Loki knows. He understands, just as he always had.

The evening of his coronation, the moons high in the sky, Loki lets himself to the edge of the Bifrost, to the entrance to Heimdall's domain. He has not been here since Steve, since his last failed test of Thor's will. Heimdall gazes through him, seeing all there is to see.

"What do you see, Gatekeeper?"

"I know what you plan," Heimdall intones. "You have grown transparent."

"He will come," Loki says, even as he feels the rush of the Bifrost's power over his skin. "A last favor to the savior of their world."

 

Midgard smells of metal, industry, and ash. There is a great open space where Stark Tower once stood, exactly large enough for Loki to land without much ceremony; the memory of the pain for defying the blood bond is nowhere near the reality. After eight years of not testing it, it rips through him anew, forcing bile to his throat and his body to his knees. An all too familiar position that Loki no longer feels the need to protest. Thor, for all his good intentions, could be cruel, too.

He regains his footing as a woman wearing S.H.I.E.L.D. blacks hurries towards him with several agents at her back, smooths his right hand over the same formal wear he's worn since dressing this morning. She recognizes him although he doesn't her, the way that a god's relation with mortals should be. The thought gives him no pleasure.

"Loki," she says, and there are no weapons drawn. "Why have you come?"

"I wish to borrow the Captain," Loki answers, not daring to move lest the bond force his legs to buckle again. "I am to be King."

She blinks, obviously trying to understand how the request and statement are related, but Loki knows that the bond will not give him time for explanation. He opens his hands, seidr dancing within them, and holds out the sweet william and dahlia that he placed by the scrying pool that afternoon. She stares at the blossom, and he wonders if she knows their meaning.

"The debt you owe will be repaid."

That she understands.

"I'd prefer if it didn't feel so much like a kidnapping," Steve says, only a few lines by his eyes that could be anything besides age, his hair floppy from sleep. 

"I am short on time," Loki offers, and he feels, despite the pain, his lips pulling into the first real smile in years.


End file.
